• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, January 26, 2011

Ad network Burst Media has tapped the privacy compliance company Evidon to power the new you-are-being-tracked icons aimed at telling consumers about online behavioral advertising and allowing them to opt out.

Burst Media joins Collective, GroupM and VivaKi in tapping Evidon (formerly Better Advertising) for icons. Two other providers, DoubleVerify and TRUSTe, are also offering icons to advertisers and networks. The umbrella group Digital Advertising Alliance -- which is licensing use of the icons -- says on its Web site, Aboutads.info, that it expects to soon approve more companies to provide the ads.

Consumers who click on an in-ad icon served by Evidon can go to a customized opt-out page that allows them to opt out of online targeting by the particular companies that were involved in gathering data used to serve that ad.

Evidon is also offering links to the Digital Advertising Alliance's opt-out page, which allows consumers to avoid behavioral targeting by 59 companies.

Evidon says it has identified around 300 separate companies that collect data used for online behavioral advertising, or serving ads to consumers based on Web sites they have visited. For now, however, Evidon is not offering consumers an interface to opt out of all of those companies with a single click.

The icon initiative is key to the ad industry's attempts to convince government officials that no new privacy regulations are needed.

But despite the self-regulatory effort, the Federal Trade Commission recently proposed that Web companies voluntarily create a universal do-not-track mechanism that would enable users to opt out of all online data collection. In addition, the Commerce Department recently issued a report urging ad industry groups and consumer advocates to work together to develop enforceable self-regulatory privacy policies based on Fair Information Practices principles.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz recently criticized the ad industry for taking too long to launch the icon initiative -- which was under development for more than one year.